Cytotoxic, antioxidant, and enzyme inhibitory activities of Centaurea stapfiana extracts and their HPLC-ESI-QTOF-MS profiles: Insights into an unexplored Centaurea species

The members of the genus Centaurea have a great interest in pharmaceutical and nutraceutical fields due to their biological potential. Based on this information, we aimed to evaluate the biological properties (antioxidant, enzyme inhibition and cytotoxicity) and chemical profile of the extract of Centaurea stapfiana, an unstudied species. The highest total phenolic content was found in the ethanol/water extract with 32.17 mg GAE/g. A total of 102 of them were identified by HPLC-ESI-QTOF-MS analysis. These compounds were mainly hydroxybenzoic acid and hydroxycinnamic acid as well as flavonoids. In the antioxidant tests, the ethanol/water extract had the best free radical scavenging and reducing ability. However, in the enzyme inhibition test, the ethanol extract was the most active. The extracts were also tested on two tumour cell lines (RAW 264.7 and HepG2) and one non-tumour cell line (S17). The ethanol extract showed the promising effect on HepG2 (cell viability: 28.6 % at 50 g/ml). Furthermore, we examined the interactions between the compounds and enzymatic and cellular targets. A good interaction was found between quercetin-3-xylosyl-(1- > 6)-glucoside and iNOS. In summary, our results suggest that C. stapfiana can be considered as a versatile raw material for the development of health-promoting applications in the pharmaceutical and cosmeceutical fields.